Norad recently awarded funding for a project to strengthen higher education institutions’ ability to provide high-quality research and teaching. Norad received 199 applications to this call, and the Partnership for Peace project was funded as one of 60. NCHR recently signed the project contract with NORAD.
The project has a budget of approximately 20 million NOK and will run for six years, 2021-2026. NCHR and Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) will coordinate the project, partnering with leading institutions in Benin (African School of Economics), Uganda (Makerere University), Ethiopia (Mekelle University), Colombia (Universidad de los Andes), and Palestine (Birzeit University).
The partner institutions are key regional academic actors in the fields of peace and conflict studies and human rights studies. They will provide practical experience and opportunities for fieldwork that helps ground scholarly research on lived realities.
Project leader Gentian Zyberi looks forward to cooperating with PRIO, and partnering with leading institutions in Africa, Latin-America and the Middle East over the next six years. "In close cooperation with our partners, we plan to organize PhD courses, train junior faculty staff, develop relevant curricula and arrange academic exchanges," he says, noting that the project will take place in the context of the research school focusing on peace, conflict resolution, and human rights issues. It shall develop a global network for enhancing academic capabilities in the fields of Peace and Conflict Resolution and Human Rights research.